


I'm tired of begging you to stay

by book_of_hours



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: M/M, also wow talking about 2017-2018 kt rolster in 2021 who am I??, neither keria nor meiko actually make an appearance here, they're just mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_of_hours/pseuds/book_of_hours
Summary: “That’s how it always is. I mean, you left too,” Kyungho says.Hyukkyu wishes he were nursing a cup of coffee right now, or maybe better yet a beer or something alcoholic to dull the edge of Kyungho’s voice, even as Kyungho plunges the knife right between his ribs and twists it.“You left me, you left Meiko. What’s different about it this time?”Because I didn’t get to choose this time,Hyukkyu thinks and then stops himself. It’s different. With Meiko he had left with his head held high, tempted back to Korea with the chance of success, of winning at home in front of everyone, with everything. He had wanted a Worlds win and while he didn’t know how that had worked out in the end at least he had gotten a choice. He had been fleeing his own disappointment and failure since Samsung.But that was old stuff, old emotions, drama so ancient he could blow dust off the top of it. He was forever insisting that he had moved past it, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t know why it was getting to him now.
Relationships: Kim "Deft" Hyuk-kyu/Song "Smeb" Kyung-ho
Kudos: 6





	I'm tired of begging you to stay

**Author's Note:**

> Reviving this old ship because I wanted to talk about teams that break up.
> 
> title taken from [ this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvbeaBmhWL4) midwestern emo playlist on youtube

Hyukkyu had inted as Jhin for the 3rd time that night before he finally had decided he was done. He was all things wrung and worn out, even after the two-week quarantine after returning from China or the weeks after that. He had spent the time split between texting assurances to friends and family and watching the sun lance across his wall, just short of clawing his eyes out in boredom. He had gone down to the PC bang to play a few games and clear his head, only to quickly remind himself exactly why he only played league anymore as a fact of his job, a line in his contract, and the whole of it. 

Hyukkyu swore his support had continuously sent himself to death for no other reason than to torture him specifically.

He shuts down the league client entirely before checking the clock to see how much time he had left on his computer before he needed to go ask the woman at the booth near the front of the room to add a few more hours on to his play time. 

Hyukkyu shook his bangs out of his eyes and took a long stretch. He wonders if this is the exact type of fatigue he’s heard other pros talk about in interviews before. He felt as if he needed to play games to destress from another game. If he didn’t already feel as if he lived a life stuffed full of nightmarish illogicalities, he would’ve thought it was just short of plain _absurd_.

“Has time really done that much of a number on you? You represented Korea at Worlds this year. I thought you were supposed to be good or something.”

Hyukkyu spins around in his seat, blinking rapidly as his eyes blur and refocus—still adjusting from the strain of staring at a screen for hours without reprieve—until the source of the voice comes into focus. 

It was Kyungho, of course, because who else would it be. He was standing before him, arms crossed, an expression of calculated neutrality stretched across his face, as if he had any right to be there. It didn’t matter the months or even years of time and distance Hyukkyu put between them, they would always find a way to meet, even now when he hadn’t seen him in real life outside of fleetingly during games since before Hyukkyu could remember.

“Hello, Hyukkyu,” Kyungho says softly over the dull hum of the mostly empty room, looking down at him from where he stood just to side in the aisle just beside him. “Haven’t seen you in ages.”

Hyukkyu gets to his feet if only to meet Kyungho at the same height, “Kyungho-hyung, what are you doing here?”

“I just moved and I don’t have my computer set up yet, so I was dealing with some paperwork here,” Kyungho says, waving his hand breezily. He looks just as Hyukkyu remembers, same glasses, same stupid resting smile, same straight-bang haircut he had always tried to make more interesting with a perm. “What about you? For some reason, I didn’t think you were even back in Korea yet.”

“I was just playing some games. It’s nice to get out of the house every once in a while,” Hyukkyu says.

“And so you came here?” Kyungho looks in an arc around him briefly at the trash and wrappers scattered on the floor, the empty bowls next to the computer monitors, the desks that required you to unstick the bottoms of your arms from the surface when you stood up no matter how many times you wiped them down before. Hyukkyu would be the first to admit it wasn’t the cleanest place ever, but it wasn’t far from where he lived and it was quiet too. Hyukkyu had come here under the pretense he would be left alone, but such a thought seemed to be going further and further away by the moment.

“Well, you chose to come here too."

Kyungho snorts. “I suppose you’re right.”

Hyukkyu blinks. 

He’s honestly quite lucky he has the sense to keep his mouth closed, instead of gaping like a fish when he realizes he is out of things to say. The time and distance yawning between them froze him in place and washed his mind completely blank when he tried to think of anything to say that strayed anywhere outside the realm of simple pleasantries. There was so much that had changed, so much Hyukkyu had wanted to say to him, but he couldn't remember. Now he didn’t even know where to _begin._

Kyungho raises his eyebrows at Hyukkyu’s silence before he jerks one thumb towards the door, “Do you wanna go?”

-

They find a park bench outside in the cold that Kyungho deems a suitable place to talk. After they sit, Kyungho kicks his legs out in front of him, crossing them as if giving off an air of assured confidence.

“Is there something you wanted to talk about?” Hyukkyu asks. He wraps his coat tighter around himself, whether in defense against Kyungho’s looks or the cold, he didn’t know yet.

“Actually I wanted to ask about Minseok. I mean me retiring, that was to be expected. My performance?” Kyungho makes a sound akin to a plane falling from a high place and makes a motion with his hand from up to down like a rollercoaster coming down from the crest of a hill.

“But you and Minseok? Now that’s interesting. You were like—“ Kyungho holds up his hand and crosses his fingers. “Like the dream team or something.”

“You retiring wasn’t so expected to me,” Hyukkyu huffs. “I didn’t even know until they published an article about it on Inven.” 

Despite what Jihoon would tell you, Hyukkyu didn’t actually go on Inven very often. He never liked looking at the news. He could only bear to read about his former teammates so many times before it felt less like checking up on an old friend and more like punching a hole through his chest. 

Kyungho glances at Hyukkyu, “I asked a question first.”

Hyukkyu snickers and shakes his head. _Typical and the same, never changing,_ he thinks. Some small part of him wonders if this is how he broke any kind of news to all of his old teammates.

“Why do you even want to know? Is it really that interesting to you?”

Somewhere in him, Hyukkyu wishes he had gone to a different PC bang tonight. He never really left any space for self-reflection and he was all the ways and more not ready to have this conversation, not so soon after the news went public of Minseok’s leaving, of Kyungho’s, and of his own.

“Jeez, no need to be so sharp. What? Are you really that eager to get away from me?”

“No, it’s just been a while since we’ve done this, like talking alone, you know,” Hyukkyu sighs. “And besides what is there to say that hasn’t already been said by every analyst and their mother: _that we weren’t meant to fit together, that I’m too old now, that even after all these years I still crumble completely under the stress of competing_.”

Hyukkyu hugs himself, recalling a thousand conversations he had with Kyungho who never quite got over feeling fucking guilty for leaving ROX like he did, for leaving for money, for more opportunities, for some kind of means, anything, even if perhaps no one could blame him for his choice. If anyone knew what it was like to be made to feel goddamn inadequate—

“And they always ask how it’s different, right? If it will ever be the same.” Kyungho says, his voice pitched in such a way that Hyukkyu had to strain to hear him, for it not to be swallowed by the drawling hum of cars on the street, people in the distance, the noise in the night. “If you will ever top the same highs, find the same rhythm, fit together in the same way, playing like a single organism with only one intent.”

Hyukkyu swallows hard. “They never stop asking questions.” 

Hyukkyu turns to Kyungho and sees him looking at him with an expression Hyukkyu had never seen before. But just as quickly as Hyukkyu had turned to look at him, he turns away.

“But I mean I don’t know what you expected,” Kyungho continues, shrugging. He taps his fingers on the edge of the bench, several times in quick succession.

“I mean if he was going to leave, he was going to leave.”

Hyukkyu feels the rejection convulse tight in his chest. He thinks instinctively, _But I didn’t think he’d do that, or maybe that I wouldn’t._

“I mean it’s like what maybe we played together, risked our necks at Worlds, but he just leaves anyways?” Hyukkyu asks.

Hyukkyu can feel Kyungho look at him again, even though Hyukkyu keeps his gaze forward and into the middling dark. The temperature now had gone straight from cold to freezing and the trees were leafless this time of year. Hyukkyu kept himself grounded watching his breath curl in smoke and disappear into the needling December air.

“That’s how it always is. I mean, you left too,” Kyungho says.

Hyukkyu wishes he were nursing a cup of coffee right now, or maybe better yet a beer or something alcoholic to dull the edge of Kyungho’s voice, even as Kyungho plunges the knife right between his ribs and twists it.

“You left me, you left Meiko. What’s different about it this time?”

_Because I didn’t get to choose this time,_ Hyukkyu thinks and then stops himself. It’s different. With Meiko he had left with his head held high, tempted back to Korea with the chance of success, of winning at home in front of everyone, with everything. He had wanted a Worlds win and while he didn’t know how that had worked out in the end at least he had gotten a choice. He had been fleeing his own disappointment and failure since Samsung. 

But that was old stuff, old emotions, drama so ancient he could blow dust off the top of it. He was forever insisting that he had moved past it, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t know why it was getting to him now.

“I don’t know,” Hyukkyu says. His face burned. It was too late for this. “It just hurts.”

It hurt like everything hurt, like moving forward always hurts. How many times had he cut some part of himself to pieces, left something behind? When would he look into the mirror and not recognize the person he’d become, that he would no longer be himself but some constitution of everything he had ever lost?

He had left a hundred versions of himself behind, every one different and refracted back on each other until he didn't even know which parts were ever him.

Kyungho twists in his seat. He still keeps his gaze on Hyukkyu like he couldn’t look away, “What about when you joined KT, or was that like coming home?”

“That was different.”

Some days he still dreams of KT Rolster. Still hears Sehyeong’s voice in his ears, forever nagging, he still sees Dongbin’s eyes up over his computer screen, Wonseok and Kyungho sometimes too, when they were desperate and wheeling for a win, for something, anything at all.

Hyukkyu runs his hand up and down his arms in a feeble attempt to get warm again or maybe the repetitive motion distracted him from the situation at hand.

“That was a different era,” he says. “We all made choices. I wanted to come back from China and it was what worked at the time.”

Hyukkyu didn’t understand why Kyungho was digging in more here. He didn’t like thinking about the past recently, not when everyone was placing bets on when he would finally cut the line and retire. It was like someone had tied a stone to his neck and dropped him in a river, like every moment that passed was another moment gone and everything was always changing, always new faces, always new teams that rose and fell, and the scene was becoming something beyond recognition and strange. He was getting to the part of his career where he just felt _useless_ , when he just couldn’t bring it like he used to and when everyone he had ever played with, played against was disappearing and it did more to him than he’d like to admit.

“I’m sure you heard about Seohaeng retiring,” Hyukkyu says. He almost holds his breath after he says this, testing the waters, how far he could go out. He reasons that if Kyungho could dig his teeth into Hyukkyu’s regrets, why couldn’t he do the same?

“Yes, I did. He told me before they announced it,” Kyungho says. He digs his hand into his pocket like he was looking for something. Hyukkyu wonders if he still smokes. “You know you were never—” he interrupts suddenly, “I mean I didn’t mean to give you the impression that—” He shakes his head.

“I don’t ever think I made myself clear and I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Kyungho says.

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“I mean— I just think we stopped communicating somewhere or maybe we never did in the first place. Either way yes I did hear about Seohaeng retiring and it made me think about back then. And I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

He sighs, “It’s a bad excuse but I really didn’t know what to say to you. I haven’t known what to say to you since we stopped playing together honestly.”

Hyukkyu remembers when KT imploded after that second year, that even after winning the LCK trophy together, after redemption following months of lackluster play, it was never enough. He wonders if Kyungho feels the same as him, that in the aftermath he never apologized and now he doesn’t know if he would ever be allowed to even try to make amends, or if he would forever be forced to hurt people in his leaving, even if he didn’t want to.

“Me too,” Hyukkyu says quietly.

It had taken years and years, the dissolution of teams, the crossing of continents for Hyukkyu and Kyungho to end up as teammates and now they didn’t even talk. _I came to beat SKT, I came to play with some of the best players in the LCK, I came to win,_ Kyungho had always said, but hardly ever received any of the results. Living with Kyungho had been like navigating a roiling ocean. He rocked from goal to goal and end to end, all confidence and veneer with none of the stability he needed, none which Hyukkyu had always thought experience would’ve given him. Hyukkyu had stopped trying to fully understand him years ago.

“What will you do now that you're retired?” Hyukkyu asks.

“I don’t know,” He says. “Play different games, go to the gym when they finally reopen, find some way to continue.” Kyungho chuckles, “Right now I need to get a job, but I’ll manage. Other pros have done it before.”

“Some better than others.”

“I guess that’s true, but what can you do at this point?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a younger Kyungho takes shape before him, a Kyungho from the first time they ever met as friends, instead of as teammates, as competitors, as colleges, as passing ships in a night that stretched on until one of them gave up or died or maybe both.

Kyungho checks the hour on his phone, “It’s getting late. Do you think we should go?” Kyungho asks and Hyukkyu nods, hoping he will see.

Kyungho gets to his feet and dusts himself off. He rummages through his pockets like he’s lost something a moment before sticking his hand out to Hyukkyu. Hyukkyu looks up at him and for the first time since sitting down here, he sees Kyungho’s face completely, soft and open as if asking him to come with him.

Hyukkyu takes his hand, even lets him pull him to his feet and near. They’re so close now their breath mingles together between them. If Hyukkyu were to lean in, they would be kissing, but he doesn’t. 

They didn’t do things like that anymore. Maybe there had been a time in his life that he made space for Kyungho somewhere in his heart and sometimes he wonders if there was a time Kyungho ever made space for him in his, but certainly not now. They were never good for each other or maybe they just met at the wrong time when Hyukkyu was still too busy trying to convince himself that he was straight and Kyungho was too busy pretending he was over Seohaeng.

He lets Kyungho tug him down the frosty street, hand warm in his.

Old dreams don’t die quietly but somewhere inside of Hyukkyu the knot of anxiety that he had held there since before he could remember loosened and like opening a window, he let the thought of it float away.

-

That night Hyukkyu tries to sleep fitfully.

It’s not often he dreams of his own life, but when he does he finds he dwells more over some things than others. Tonight what he dreams of is a phantom memory drawn from exactly what Kyungho had said and years old remembrances. It came to him after he went to bed that night, played before his eyes, watery and unformed, jerking back and forth between the beginning and the end like a needle skipping on a scratched record.

But regardless, the memory as it went was always the same: It was two weeks into the first summer split he played on KT. Hyukkyu was half-heartedly reviewing VODs, splitting his attention between scrolling through some random ESPN article and listening to Dongbin and Sehyeong bicker about some finer point of the differences between the current patch and the previous season’s meta changes. 

“I don’t see how this is particularly relevant,” Kyungho drawls from where he’s lounging two computers down from Hyukkyu. “Sehyeong-hyung wasn’t even in the country last year so of course you would see it differently.”

“I was just saying he was a rather unimpressive support,” Dongbin huffs, crossing his arms. “Sehyeong was tearing into my jungling even though his team’s macro was shit—” Dongbin squawks as Sehyeong smacks him upside the head.

“We made it to Worlds though,” Sehyeong snaps. “You lost to Samsung and couldn’t even leave Regionals.”

Dongbin waves hit off, “At least we lost to someone who ended up winning the whole thing.”

Dongbin’s retort sends them both into a squabbling match over who was right over who, before Sehyeong starts saying something about old play records and 2014 and the regional finals that year. This draws Wonseok’s attention, far more interested in watching this play out than any of the patch reviewing he had been doing, and he even occasionally interjects whenever Sehyeong screws the facts, completely ignoring the games he’s queued for.

Hyukkyu at that point was used to the way his team rocked and roiled. He had never exactly been on a team or a sister team of a team that ever settled things quietly. He had always been a bit quiet by nature and mostly he spent the time cast adrift, something of a tugboat tossed between his teammates.

Sehyeong digs in further against Dongbin’s insistence that Samsung only ever won because the patch had been tailor-made for them, that they played a playstyle that didn’t even exist anymore _and for good reason, Sehyeong. Face it, you’re a dinosaur, you’re a fossil, I can see you decaying in real-time—_ But it’s only after Dongbin seizes the mouse and keyboard out of Sehyeong’s hands to drag up articles, that things border on chaotic. 

Kyungho elects to ignore them and rolls his chair over to Hyukkyu.

“They’re so loud,” he whines.

“You say that like you’re not the loudest,” Hyukkyu snorts. Kyungho was never one to only observe on and comment, always one to do. On any given day he jumped from shiny thing to shiny thing, anything he could sink his teeth into and shake, anyone at whose vulnerable and exposed parts he could jab at while laughing.

Kyungho grins, “Well maybe, but even I don’t want to be involved with that.” He flicks his head in Sehyeong’s direction, who had commandeered the computer back from Dongbin and was now playing compilations of all the times Samsung White bodied KT Bullets in the 2014 regional finals, pointing out and laughing at the points where Dongbin died.

“Sehyeong knows you better and you were in China too. You better be thankful he didn’t drag you into it too.”

“I think Sehyeong has had enough of bothering me about things because I learned it’s just better to say nothing rather than riling him up.”

Hyukkyu is dismissive, if only because he doesn’t want Kyungho to pry any deeper. In Sehyeong still he sees flashes of the angry nagging way he used to shove around his teammates, except maybe Seungbin who was never one to go quietly and would go toe to toe and hit to hit on Sehyeong on any given measure. And it was Seungbin Sehyeong would forever be bothering him about, even if he didn’t like to talk about it now.

“And you know this because what, he used to?” Kyungho scoots closer and looks at him, eyebrows raised. “But why? You weren’t even on the same team?” He says this, ruining Hyukkyu’s plan to wriggle out of this conversation like he wriggled out of every conversation anyone tried to have with him when it was about his past.

He stutters, searching for something he could say to avoid the question, “Well mostly it’s because—”

He’s suddenly cut off by Sehyeong’s piercing voice, “ _Oh yeah, hey Hyukkyu who could forget this?_ ”

Hyukkyu snaps his head around to see what had grabbed Sehyeong’s attention this time. Somehow he and Dongbin had taken a sharp dive down the YouTube rabbit hole and were watching old clips from Season 4 Worlds now.

What Hyukkyu sees is a clip of the moments just after the end of the semis game in which Samsung White beat Blue, when they were all standing together, side by side. On stage, Hyukkyu is standing next to Seungbun, face red and blotchy with tears. It’s not an image he likes to remember, something he had locked down so far within himself he thought it would never see the light of day again.

Samsung Blue was a brawling set of mistakes and missed opportunities. But mostly it was the unrealized potential that haunted him most, especially now when he was mired in his own mistakes.

“I forgot he cried,” Wonseok snickers.

“Well I forgot you were so ugly,” Kyungho interjects, seemingly picking up on Hyukkyu’s tenseness and silence and going on the defensive.

Wonseok gapes at Kyungho as Dongbin dissolves into laughter.

“Hey, that’s uncalled for,” Sehyeong says. “We all didn’t look out best back then except for Hyukkyu who was always a pretty boy especially when he would cry. Fans always found that so cute.”

If Hyukkyu was a more confrontational person he would’ve lobbed his water bottle at the three of them like a goddamned Molotov cocktail.

“We all have our own paths to forge. No need to disparage others,” Kyungho says, his voice pinched and he smiles in the way he does when he wants to be placating.

“You _all_ suck,” Hyukkyu says, ignoring them to turn back around, finish the VOD and queue another game. KT was still off tilted and unwieldy. He was tired of losing. They weren’t getting anywhere, weren’t making any _results._ He didn’t want to deal with any of their bullshit today.

Sehyeong makes an obscene gesture, before snapping his attention back to yell at Dongbin who had taken control of the computer and had managed to dig up some old picture of Sehyeong and his ex on a random Chinese site, even though Sehyeong swore he had deleted them all.

Hyukkyu is only halfway through pulling his tabs back up before Kyungho takes the opportunity to rollup close to Hyukkyu until he was flush against his side and to set his chin on Hyukkyu’s shoulder.

“You really should just ignore them. They’re just jealous you have a nice face and they don’t,” Kyungho mutters. His face so close to Hyukkyu, he could feel his breath roll against his cheek.

“I do ignore them,” Hyukkyu sighs. “You’re the one who keeps engaging with other people when they talk shit.”

Kyungho tucks his head against Hyukkyu’s neck and Hyukkyu honest to god flushes, “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

“It’s fine. I accept your apology,” Hyukkyu says. If he hadn’t been so distracted by the feeling of Kyungho’s body slumped against his, he would’ve startled when the queue screen popped on his screen, but instead, he makes quick work of choosing his lane and starting the process of pick and bans.

“Do that thing you were doing before. I wanna see it again. I like watching you play.” Kyungho’s voice was low and curled softly. It rumbled in his ear and sent shivers down Hyukkyu’s spine. 

2017 had been anything but a good year for Hyukkyu, at times he would wonder with some quiet desperation if he would ever come out the other side anything like the same. He mostly staves off his personal existential crises with enough practices and scrims to make anyone's eyes bleed, but also too he allows himself a few mercies. He lets Kyungho take his hand and hold it in his, strung somewhere between them where the others wouldn’t see.

Hyukkyu takes stock of the scene that presents itself to him: Dongbin and Sehyeong bickering in the corner while Wonseok pops popcorn into his mouth, laughing, the way Kyungho leans into him like he was made to be there, how he breathes easy against the nape of Hyukkyu’s neck, and some forgotten version of himself wonders how long he will stay here too.

**Author's Note:**

> So this one started as a way to write something to take a break from the other thing I was working on and it became this. I began working on this a bit after keria moved to t1 and smeb announced his retirement because of course I had thoughts, but I forgot about it until I unearthed it when going through my wips. 
> 
> I basically ended up having two scenes from two different time periods, but they shared the same themes, so I tried to string them together if that makes any sense.
> 
> I’m sorry this is so melodramatic :( There's a lot of talking but nothing happens lol
> 
> deft / smeb + park bench + giving up on a dream 
> 
> from [ this](https://promptgenerator.tumblr.com/lol#_=_) old lol prompt generator
> 
> and now something a bit lighter: [ x](https://mobile.twitter.com/AshleyKang/status/1280819280011902976) and [ x](https://mobile.twitter.com/Autumnfall_2/status/1280819705666650117)


End file.
